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In an interview with Japanese site Game Watch (via PlayStation Lifestyle), creative director Kazutoyo Maehiro noted that in the early stages of the game, players will control a character other than Clive. When asked if this was similar to Reks in Final Fantasy 12, he agreed. Watch on YouTube Final Fantasy 16’s Ambition trailer. In that game, players begin by controlling Reks for a short introductory section. It seems Final Fantasy 16 may have a similar structure, though it’s unclear who this mystery character may be....

Remedy’s supernatural third-person action adventure is free on Epic’s store now until 4pm UK time on 17th June. Control is normally £24.99. Donlan penned Eurogamer’s Control review, saying “giddy action and astonishing art design combine in one of the great locations of modern video games”. Well worth grabbing, then, if you don’t have it already. Action-platform shooter Hell is Other Demons and chaotic cooking game Overcooked! 2 are both free from Epic’s store from 17th June to 24th June....

The basics of the upgrade are already out there, courtesy of Remedy PR. There’s feature parity between PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X with Control rendering at a native 1440p resolution, with temporal upsampling to 4K. Two modes are on offer - a 30fps capped experience featuring ray traced reflections (including transparencies) along with a 60fps performance mode without RT features. Meanwhile, Xbox Series S has no RT features, meaning a performance mode as the standard that renders natively at 900p, with a 1080p output....

Servers for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition, Dark Souls: Remastered, Dark Souls 2, Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, and Dark Souls 3 were “temporarily deactivated” back in January following reports the games were vulnerable to Remote Code Execution exploits. Several weeks later, Bandai Namco offered an update, saying the issue would’t be addressed until after the release of Elden Ring, but Dark Souls fans’ patience was finally rewarded in August when online features for Dark Souls 3 were restored....

Curiously, while Deathloop may well be exclusive to PC and PlayStation 5, it’s not exactly pushing back technological boundaries, and that’s OK. Beyond the stylised, beautifully realised aesthetic, I did enjoy some of the technical flourishes including the highly detailed parallax occlusion maps on ground textures, along with the quality of the first person weapon animations. It’s also interesting to note that the reload depth of field effect seen in Criterion’s Black (and never seen again!...

Bungie released a statement on Destiny 2’s help page, emphasising that the game is not supported for play on the “Steam Deck or any system utilising Steam Play’s Proton unless Windows is installed and running”. The statement goes on to say: “Players who attempt to launch Destiny 2 on the Steam Deck through SteamOS or Proton will be unable to enter the game and will be returned to their game library after a short time....

Released on the weekly reset on April 6th, 2021 as part of the Week 9 set of challenges, it tasks you with kills while wearing a complete armour set. Though this challenge sounds simple, there are instances where players are seeing Suited for Combat not working. If you are interested in completing challenges from previous weeks in Season of the Chosen, we have explainers for the three Salvager’s Salvo challenges and Gravel Scrawl....

John Gibson, president of the Chivalry 2, Killing Floor and Maneater publisher, tweeted to say he “felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer”. Atlanta, Georgia-based co-developer Shipwright Studios, which worked on Chivalry 2 and Maneater, tweeted in response to say it had cancelled all its existing contracts with Tripwire. Chivalry 2 developer Torn Banner Studios, based on Toronto, stopped short of announcing it had cut ties with Tripwire, but it did tweet to distance itself from Gibson’s statement....

Why compile on the fly - and why doesn’t the same issue impact consoles? The two questions are interlinked: shader code can be pre-compiled on consoles as they’re fixed platforms and the data is included on the disc or in your download - things are trickier for PC because every GPU and driver revision requires a new round of compiled shaders. Adding to the problem - and perhaps explaining why code makes it to the end-user with so many issues - is the fact that once shaders have been compiled on PC, they’re cached to disk and re-used when needed without re-compilation....

The game feels natural in your hands on a phone, too (I’m using a Pixel 6). It loads quickly (for me) and plays smoothly, and the virtual joystick on the left tracks my thumb around the screen fairly reliably, and I can fire off abilities with my other thumb, on the other side of the screen, fairly reliably too. There are occasional snags, though. Sometimes the joystick doesn’t pick up my thumb movement, leaving me standing still, which is not great in the middle of battle and has made me shout out in anger a few times....

Community manager SinfulScribe posted a comment on the game’s subreddit earlier this week, stating that thanks to “the helpful efforts of the community”, the team had identified the issue and deployed an update to rectify the error. “Through the helpful efforts of the community, we were alerted to a text description discrepancy with the Blessing of the Worthy Legendary Gem,” they explained. “At a certain rank, the gem’s description changed from ‘maximum life’ to ‘current life’ verbiage, leaving players reasonably confused on which of the two descriptions was intended....

The Arctis Nova Pro from SteelSeries is a Digital Foundry favourite for good reason, it must be said, given that it offers excellent sound quality and an especially comfortable design, for starters. In taking sound quality first, there’s great detail and a wide soundstage, especially for a closed back headset. In addition, the wired model on show here also comes with a high-end Sabre DAC built into the base station to help it sound even better....

Previously, Discord users have been able to grant channel access to users, or groups of users, but not for payment within Discord itself. Typically, payment services such as Paypal, or groups of users signed up to a Patreon, will be cross-referenced instead. Now, Discord is working to bring paid channel functionality into its popular chat client (thanks, Engadget), with server owners able to set pricing tiers and access levels. As for how much these should cost, Discord has some suggestions....

Showcased at the recent Disney & Marvel Games Showcase, the realm looks exactly as you just may expect, including a recreation of Andy’s bedroom where you’ll get to hang out with your favourite Toy Story characters. Admittedly, we didn’t learn much else - the trailer doesn’t even last two minutes and the description simply says “discover the brand-new Toy Story adventure coming this fall in Dreamlight Valley” – but we did learned that you’ll be able to partner up with “Woody and Buzz” for a “brand-new Toy Story adventure” where you’ll also be able to bring your friends from other Disney valleys, too....

Launching in early access this week - by purchasing one of three editions, or having an Xbox Game Pass subscription - Disney Dreamlight Valley has you team up with Disney and Pixar characters to help free the inhabitants of the titular Dreamlight Valley. To help make sure you’re playing as soon as possible in your time zone, you’ll find all of the Disney Dreamlight Valley release times, as well as an idea of what to expect from early access....

It was weird. The performance (which you can watch in full below) was broadcast on Twitch and YouTube (as well as in VR using the YouTube VR app) and had Aoki playing a set in a number of Sonic-themed backdrops, from the iconic Green Hill Zone to Chemical Plant. Sonic and co raced around the areas and shimmied awkwardly, proving the blue blur can run fast but can’t dance. It looked more like a techno Balan Wonderworld....

Klei, best-known for its enormously popular gothic survival adventure Don’t Starve, said it remains in control of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent and more. The Tencent purchases means “there are some boring accounting changes that we will need to adjust to”, Klei founder Jamie Cheng said in a post on the studio’s forum, but other than that, “I will continue running the studio as before, with no changes to staffing, projects or other operations....

If you’ve already played Don’t Starve, you’ll be right at home with Together; it takes the original’s deliciously dark survival conceit - in which you awake in an expansive, wonderfully twisted world and must forage, maim, eat, and build in order to survive long enough to orchestrate an escape - but enables you to do it all with friends in tow. There are three different modes available - Survival (in which players become revivable ghosts on death), the resurrection-free Wilderness, and a more leisurely Endless mode - all incorporating features from the original Don’t Stare, its Reign of Giants expansion, plus elements from the Hamlet and Shipwrecked DLCs....

Thanks to new bot Tweet2Doom, Twitter users can reply to tweets with various commands to control Doom Guy and receive a video clip of the results. That means the game can either be played collectively, by replying to others as more of a turn-based affair, or a whole sequence of inputs as a speed run. The pinned tweet on the account explains it all. Letters denote various action inputs, and numbers denote the number of frames those actions last for....

The project is being lead by Dominic Guay, a 20-year veteran of Ubisoft who worked on Splinter Cell before rising to become senior producer of Watch Dogs and its sequel. Invoke owner and D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast announced the new project this week with only a few details: that it will have a triple-A scope, and be developed on the Unreal 5 engine. Guay is currently working with a team of 80 people on the project, which will ramp up to 200 employees by 2025....